Good Bye My Almost Lover
by Queen of Kaos
Summary: Jeff Hardy contends with the loss of his soulmate. A Jeff OneShot


**Good Bye My Almost Lover  
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**A/N: This story is based on a song by A Fine Frenzy and dedicated to Reece. He knows why. Oh, and for Kim, because she always gets mad if I don't disclaim this: You might need a tissue - I did.

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_"Here, put this on."_

_Turning her head, Alison stared questioningly at the man standing at her side. "What is that?" _

_"It's a blanket," Jeff stated easily, draping the crocheted monstrosity across her thin shoulders. "We're going for a walk," he announced, his hands gripping the handlebars on her wheelchair._

_But Alison wasn't in the mood for a walk. She hadn't been in the mood for anything since he left her side the week before. "Jeff," she started as firmly as she possibly could. Seemed he was taking as many liberties as he could now that she was confined to the bed, or that stupid chair. "I'm not supposed to go anywhere," she reminded him._

_Rolling his eyes, Jeff stopped at the door and spun her around to face him. "And what are they gonna do? Kick you out?" With a crooked grin, he reached into the messenger bag on his hip, withdrawing a sparkling object. "Besides, it's your birthday, Princess." Dropping the plastic tiara gently onto her head, he watched her fight the emotions behind her beautiful, green eyes. _

_She didn't want to thank him. Didn't want to admit that she was glad to see him, or anyone anymore. But it was there. He could see it. And as soon as the sunlight kissed her face, when the ocean air filled her nostrils, and the soft breeze danced over her bare skin, she would be grateful. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was glad he was there. Of that much, Jeff Hardy was sure._

The pounding on the door interrupted Jeff's revelry as he cradled his guitar in his lap. He didn't have to extend the invitation. Matt would let himself in. He always did, whether Jeff was busy or not. "Come in," he spoke as loudly as he could in spite of himself, hoping that the irritated tone of his voice would alert his brother to the fact that he wasn't in the mood for visitors at the moment.

But it wasn't Matt who stepped over the threshold of his trailer home. With a look of deep concern, his boyfriend of the last two years smiled softly. "Hey," Randy Orton spoke as though volume might shatter the windows in Jeff's house. "Matt said he thought you were here," he added, moving to the couch and lowering himself to Jeff's side.

Shifting slightly, Jeff nodded and sniffled back another round of emotion. Just when he thought he wouldn't be able to cry another tear, he found the barrage overcoming him once again. "I didn't know you were coming," he finally said, though his tear-strained voice was barely above a whisper.

Wordlessly, Randy stretched one arm around the back of the couch and then reached the other across his body, his thumb wiping away the single tear that Jeff couldn't hide from him. "Thought you might need some company," he eventually answered, relaxing against the couch when Jeff's head dropped back on his bicep.

Neither man spoke as Jeff hugged his guitar to his chest and blinked madly toward the ceiling. It wasn't like he hadn't known it was coming. He remembered as though it were yesterday the day she had begun warning him of their uncertain future. Like she was still sitting across the living room from him, still dressed in her little denim skirt and tee shirt. Still looking to him for some kind of deliverance.

_"Six months. Maybe a year, if I'm really lucky." There was a slight smile on Alison's lips as she told Jeff that she'd been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She was only twenty-eight. She'd found the lump during a self exam in the shower, but her insurance wouldn't pay for a mammogram, she was too young. So she ignored it. Refused to tell anyone. Prayed it would go away. When it didn't, she went to the doctor. And it was too late. "But I've never been that lucky, ya know?" she chuckled, and he could tell that she wasn't amused or kidding._

_He didn't know what to say. She had been his best friend for as long as he could remember. Sure, he hung out with Matt and Shannon and the guys a lot, but it was Alison that was his confidante. She was the one he went to when nobody else understood the madness in his mind. Not that she understood much better, but she knew how to talk to him. She always knew what to say. Usually._

_At a complete loss, Jeff opened his mouth, releasing his heart in a song he had heard on his last trip with the WWE overseas. He wasn't sure what the words meant, but he had asked a local to write out the lyrics to the Spanish lullaby for him, and he had studied them until they felt like second nature. He wasn't sure exactly what comfort he was offering her, but as Alison stood from the raggedy arm chair and crossed the room, he was sure it was enough._

_Jeff didn't know it at the time, but it hadn't been the timber of his voice, or the lilting cadence of the foreign words that drew her from her seat. As he sang, his hazel eyes filled with such a sadness that Alison couldn't keep her place. She couldn't stay there and let him suffer. She would die, she knew in that moment, but she would leave behind the most beautiful soul she'd ever known. His pain was a thousand times worse in her chest as she curled into his side and laid her head in his lap. _

"She used to say that she wished she could take my pain away," Jeff laughed cynically, his head rolling along Randy's warm skin. "My pain." Cringing at the crack in his voice, he fought to swallow the lump rising in his throat. "She could barely sit up straight, but she wanted me to be okay."

Randy thought he could understand that thought. The room reeked of anguish. If he could have been anywhere else, he was pretty sure would have been. He had liked Alison well enough. He had learned early on that being with Jeff meant spending time with Alison, as well. She was a cool chick, and he really didn't mind her. But he didn't love her. Not like Jeff did. And he knew that he couldn't offer a single drop of empathy for the man he did love. There was nothing he could do to ease Jeff's pain, and it killed him.

"Have you eaten anything?"

With a huff, Jeff allowed his eyes to drift shut. "Not really hungry. Can you just go chill at Matt's for a little while or somethin'?" He knew that Randy was trying to help. He knew that the younger man's interest was only in helping through the sorrow, but it wasn't working. Randy, of course, couldn't possibly know that he was acting just like Alison used to, trying to get him to eat when she didn't know what else to do for him. It was just too much to handle at the moment.

Randy tried to remember what Matt had said. "_When Jeff's goin' through somethin', he likes to be alone. Don't take it personal if he asks you to leave. Just come on back and wait it out with us._" It wasn't personal. Still, he couldn't help wondering if anyone would ever be able to fill the hole Alison had left in his lover's heart. He couldn't help wishing that he was enough in that moment. "Sure," he answered deftly, pressing a soft kiss to Jeff's temple before he stood and headed toward the front door. "Call me," he started and then though better of finishing the thought when it was clear Jeff wasn't listening anyway.

_"Come here."_

_Alison's eyes darted suspiciously around the crowded New York sidewalk as Jeff stopped suddenly in front of a tee shirt store in the East Village. It was nearly eleven o'clock. In Cameron, the streets would have been rolled up already, but in the Big Apple, they were packed with weekend partiers. Jeff had been talking about the East Village since the first time he had visited with his dad and brother nearly three years earlier, and Alison could see why._

_Artisans sold hand-made goods from carts and small shops. Artists offered to paint them from folding chairs next to the street. Aspiring filmmakers walked amongst them, searching desparately through their lenses for the perfect story. But she knew that Jeff's favorite thing was the musicians, propped against the buildings with their open guitar cases, pandering for change with the most organic music she'd ever heard._

_It didn't seem to matter to him that people were breezing past them from all directions. All that mattered to Jeff was the beat of the acoustic drummer he had stopped beside. With one hand on Alison's waist, he pulled her to his chest and tightly clasped her free hand in his between them. "I have to tell you something," he whispered in her ear as they swayed to the music._

_With a giggle, Alison stared up at the sky as Jeff dipped her toward the pavement beneath their feet. "Tell me all your secrets, Jeffrey," she sighed as he returned her to an upright position. They were twenty years old and life had been far more kind than either had ever dreamed. He had already signed a WWE contract. She was on the Dean's list at UNC. Nothing could stop the friends from being anything they wanted to be in life._

_"I'm gay." The admission had been so silent against the raucous noise of passers by and the music that she had almost missed it. Had Alison not already suspected as much from her friend, she might have asked him to repeat it. _

_Instead, she raised an eyebrow and leveled him with a mock glare. "Are you trying to tell me that I'm not getting laid tonight?" When Jeff rolled his eyes and stopped moving to the music, she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and then released it. "What do you want me to say, Jeff? Congratulations?"_

_It was clearly a bigger issue for him than it was for her. "Just tell me," he started, wondering just what it was that he wanted her to say. Matt had always joked that Alison would be Jeff's first, and she was. She was the only person he had ever told. She was the only one he could think about telling when he decided to come clean about his sexual orientation. He couldn't imagine anyone else being his first. "Just tell me I'm not a fuckin' freak," he pleaded._

_Taking both of his cheeks in her hands, Alison studied Jeff's eyes and ran her thumbs over his cheeks. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. More than the flawless features and the piercing eyes, he had a soul that emenated from every part of him. He was perfect just the way he was. "Do you think I'm a freak?" He shook his head. "Then neither are you."_

_He nearly missed her meaning, but the twinkle in her eye and the way her broad grin broke across her face told him exactly what she had been getting at. "You?" he asked incredulously. "You never told me? Dammit, Ali," he started to pout._

_But Alison just laughed and hugged him closely. "I've never admitted it out loud," she whispered just as he had. "Jeff, I'm gay, too." _

Jeff stood from the couch and raked his fingers through his ratted hair. He hadn't been able to bring himself to shower since hearing the news of Alison's passing two days earlier. "Dammit, Ali," he cursed under his breath, hands clasped at the back of his head as he stared at the vine-covered ceiling in his living room. "How do I do this?"

Shaking his head, he tried to clear the memories that assaulted him at a rapid rate. He remembered driving down to Myrtle Beach, driving down the coast with the top down. She always threw her arms into the air and exclaimed that it was better than any roller coaster. He remembered picking her up from her ex-girlfriend, Noelle's, house, sitting in the front seat of his pick up truck and holding her while she soaked his tee shirt and shook like a leaf. He remembered waking up the morning after his split with Brian Kendrick, heart shattered into a thousand pieces but unable to keep the smile at bay as she studied him with a sparkling look.

He wandered aimlessly toward his bedroom, the mattress reminding him of his last meeting with her. She had been so frail, so pale and fragile against the hospital bed. There were tubes and monitors everywhere, and dark circles under her eyes. He had been fighting with Randy, and she had known it in an instant.

_"Jeffy," she pouted weakly, holding an arm up as far as she possibly could. "Cuddle with me." Paying no mind to the chords, he slipped into the bed and wrapped his arms around her slight form. She was barely more than skin and bones. "I promised to give you and Randy a baby," she whispered into his hair. It was true, she had promised to be their surrogate more than a year earlier. She wasn't sure why she'd just remembered that morning._

_The absurdity of the statement caused Jeff to laugh in spite of himself. "Randy can find his own damn baby," he shot, his shoulders easing immediately as her fingers gently worked through the strands of his blue and purple hair. "Sorry. We had a fight," he added._

_"Happens," Alison answered simply. "You'll pull through," she added. "You always find a way to pull through, Jeff Hardy."_

_Alison was, quite simply, the purest form of love Jeff had ever known. His body and his heart had belonged to his fair share of men, but this woman had been the only to ever truly hold his soul. What they had transcended the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual. They didn't always agree, but they always held on. Always pulled through. "Don't know if I can, Ali," he admitted, more to himself than to her. "Can I tell you something really childish?" She giggled and nodded, her chin brushing against the top of his head as her hand rested on his back. "I don't want you to die."_

_Tears pricked angrily at the backs of Alison's eyes, causing her to blink in a fury. If there was anybody in the world she could break down with, it was Jeff. But for some reason, it seemed important not to. Not now. Not when he needed her. Sniffling, she moved her eyes to the ceiling and prayed her voice wouldn't quiver. "I have an immature confession of my own," she assured him, her hand sliding at a painstaking rate to the back of his neck. "When we were younger, I used to pray that God would magically transform you into a woman."_

_Unable to fight the laugh that bubbled up out of his throat, he shifted his position until he was looking into her pale face, her sunken eyes still twinkling as though there were stars behind him. Stars that danced only for him. "Thanks," Jeff shot sarcastically as he watched her eyes drift to the bedside table and back. "Well, for the record," he added, grabbing the tiara she had been eyeing and placing it on her head, as he had just a few months earlier, "if you had a penis, I would have totally made you my queen a long time ago."_

_Try as she might to giggle, Alison found herself overtaken with a cough that forced her laughter to cease. When Jeff had helped her drink the water from the bedside table, she ran a hand down his cheek, as she always did when she wanted to memorize his features. "Do you remember what I told you the first time you left for that wrestling camp thing?"_

_Jeff remembered it as though it had happened twenty minutes earlier. "You were afraid I was going to forget you. I told you I was only going to be gone for three weeks, but you said a lot could happen in three weeks and you didn't want to lose us." Another round of emotion stuck in his throat. This time, when he said good-bye, it wasn't going to be for three weeks. It wasn't going to be temporary at all. _

_As her thumb travelled a familiar path over his bottom lip, Alison managed a smile even as her brow gathered and her eyes blinked. "Don't forget me, okay?" she asked over the tears that pooled in her big eyes as she pressed a sweet kiss to his lips._

He couldn't fight it anymore. Crawling into his own bed, empty and alone, Jeff curled into the position he'd found that day, nearly fetal against Alison's chest. Sobs of agony wracked his body as he allowed himself to drown in the misery that had been teasing him from the outskirts of his pain for the last two days.

Before Randy, there had been other guys. She'd had long and short term girlfriends. They had shared their beds and their lives with other men and women. Just the way God had intended, Alison had assured him repeatedly over the years. They were never meant to be lovers, of that much Jeff was sure. But he was equally sure that no one else would ever suit him so perfectly. Alison had been his life partner. His soul mate.

He would get up someday. He would walk out of the house and start to live his life again. Some day, the pain would ease somewhat and he would do everything she had asked him to do. He would write a song for her. He would notice the first flowers of spring, just as she always had. He would make blindingly amazing love to the man of his dreams. He would tell his father that Randy was more than his roommate. And he would never, ever forget her.


End file.
